RED BLUFF — A South Main Street business is setting up to celebrate 60 years next week and a host of festivities have been planned to mark the special occasion for Lariat Bowl, 365 S. Main Street.

“We found an article about the open house, which was Oct. 24, 1958, and that led to a weeklong celebration,” said owner Susan McFadyen. “We’re asking people in the community to come out and celebrate with us.”

Things kick off on Sunday at 2 p.m. with registration for an open handicap no-tap tournament. The tournament has a $20 entry fee and starts at 3 p.m. Registration can be done online.

Monday will have a dessert social from 4-6 p.m. Tuesday is senior appreciation day with free coffee and dessert for seniors from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Way Back Wednesday features prices from 1958 — 25 cents per game and 10-cent shoe rentals from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday is Women in Bowling Wine Tasting. From 4 to 7 p.m. ladies get a free glass of wine. Friday is customer appreciation day where it’s buy one get one free for both bowling and pizza from noon to 11 p.m. There is a teen and tween lock in with a Halloween costume contest from 9 p.m. to midnight on Friday. Cost for the lock-in is $20 per person.

DN file photoMatt Haman watches his daughter bowl at an event at Lariat Bowl in December 2017.

Lariat Bowl was built in 1958 by custom builder Rudolph Rapp and started operating later that year in October with the same pin setters original to the building still in play today.

“They were built in the 1950s when they built them to last,” McFadyen said.

The original owners were E.E. “Toar” Slayton, C.B. Chuck Graves and Marshall Leeper, who were from Redding. Slayton had a Navy and junkyard background, Graves owned Cal-Ore Lumber Company and Leeper was the general manager of U.S. Plywood in Anderson. Leeper and Graves also owned the property in addition to the business.

McFadyen’s father, Gene Penne, was an avid bowler and in 1957 had been bowling at Country Bowl in Redding, but started playing at Lariat Bowl when it opened in 1958, she said. In January 1963, one of the partners wanted to leave the business and her father became half owner of the business, McFadyen said. He acquired the remaining 50 percent and took over ownership of the business in October 1964 and the building and land in February 1965.

Some furniture was acquired from Olive Lanes in Corning when it closed in 1965 and the liquor license came to the business through the father and uncle of a grade school and high school buddy of Gene Penne’s named Bud Trede, McFadyen said. The Bud Trede family had operated Trede Brothers Bar and Pool Hall on the corner of Main and Pine streets in Red Bluff since the early 1920s.

Eventually, Penne acquired parcels of land to the south of the original property. The southwest section was used for customer parking while a southeast lot was leased to Red Bluff Ford for vehicle parking prior to the business moving to a new location in 2002.

It was her father’s dream to gut the whole inside and start over and with an empty lot available in 2003, the miniature golf course was added to the east side of the original building and the south section of the lot was developed for parking, McFadyen said.

In 2004 the building began a total remodel of the inside center and a face lift for the outside with the lanes, approaches and pinsetters the only original pieces of the inside.

“It’s afforded our family the opportunity to be involved in the community,” McFadyen said.

If you ask McFadyen her favorite part of working in a bowling alley, it’s the people, she said. She also enjoys that it is a lifelong sport that can be enjoyed by all ages.

“I started helping out when I was 10 and started on the payroll in 1971 working the lunch counter and helping at the service desk,” McFadyen said. “In high school I’d get here as soon as I got out and I worked here in college too. You get to know a lot of people. We have longtime bowlers and there’s a sense of family.”

The alley gets everything from 2-year-olds on up to a 92-year-old woman who comes in weekly and hosts a lot of events including everything from fundraisers for local nonprofits to wedding receptions and even a wedding, McFadyen said. The business is working to plan a fundraiser for the proposed Big Splash water park, tentatively set for December, she said.

For more information on events visit www.lariatbowl.com or call 527-2720.

Julie Zeeb is a North State native and covers the county and education beats for the Red Bluff Daily News. She has been with the Daily News since she started freelancing for the paper in July 2007 and lived in Tehama County since 2009.